Enough is enough: After 11 years, I'm deactivating my Twitter account

Of all the self-delusional Silicon Valley brats, men who mistakenly believe their immense fortune is somehow justified, the most vacuous may be Twitter boss Jack Dorsey.

When not preoccupied with his profitable company, Square, Dorsey pops up to tweet whenever Twitter makes a policy decision so bafflingly awful he needs to address it.

Dorsey has been tweeting a lot recently.

Jack Dorsey wants Twitter to be a news site, without the accountability.Credit:Bloomberg

His most recent collection of tweets tried to justify why Twitter remained the last safe refuge for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; whose unhinged and dangerous rantings had seen him removed from Apple Podcasts, then Facebook and YouTube.

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Dorsey justified the decision first by saying Jones had broken none of Twitter’s rules — which he admitted were constantly changing and not at all clear — before conceding Jones had actually broken the company’s rules but that they weren’t doing anything about it.

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Dorsey instead asked journalists to pick up the slack, tweeting: “Accounts like Jones' can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors, so it’s critical journalists document, validate, and refute such information directly so people can form their own opinions."

It was only after Jones went on to incite violence against said journalists — calling for his followers to get their “battle-rifles” ready — that his account was hit with a whopping one-week suspension.

When challenged, Dorsey falls back on impenetrable and circular business speak, like this doozy of a tweet: “We likely over-rotated on one value, & then let the rules react to rapidly changing circumstances (some we helped create).”

All the while, Dorsey assures us he’s hoping his decisions, and those of Twitter, will become more transparent, something he’s been tweeting consistently since 2009. It’s good to have goals, Jack.

The problem, it seems, is Dorsey has never understood his own product. He desperately wants Twitter to be seen as a news organisation, without any of the responsibility that it brings. Annoying and costly things like fact-checking and editorial decisions are for someone else to make.

You can see that in the launch of the pointless Moments feature; something Twitter hoped would turn the site into a Buzzfeedesque destination, but that never worked. The paradox for the company is this: Twitter is where news breaks, but no one needs to be on Twitter to see it break.

The hashtag #deactiday is being used by Twitter users who plan to deactivate their account on August 17.

Average people who just want to see Donald Trump promote the highly anticipated Third World War — all with Dorsey’s blessing — know they don’t need to sign up to Twitter to do so, they can just wait a few minutes and see the screen caps appear in their Facebook News Feed, or on the nightly news.

Enough is enough. After joining the service eleven years ago, after defending and promoting it for years, I’m giving up. I’m joining the movement to deactivate my account on August 17 (US time).

I hope there will be some kind of change, something to convince me to reactivate my account in the 30 days before the account is permanently deleted, but I’m not holding my breath.

Update, September 4: As some of you predicted, I’ll be re-activating my Twitter account. I honestly missed the interaction with some long-term friends on the service, some I’ve been following for over a decade. But I still feel Twitter is on death row.

When you value the freedom of an Alex Jones to spew hatred, racism, misogyny and outright lies, you’re serving his freedom of speech at the cost of users who cop abuse from him and his followers. Those attacked retreat from the service, removing their voices because the hatred is too much.

Clearly Dorsey feels Jones and friends are too valuable to lose; there’s money in hatred, misinformation and abuse. Twitter of course is not the only company profiting on hatred — Google does with Youtube, as does Facebook — but Twitter seems proud to do so. At least Google and Facebook have the common decency to appear appalled by what they’ve created.

So I’ll stick with Twitter, I’ll enjoy my friends on the service, and be utterly depressed by its mismanagement. But I want to be back, to enjoy it’s death rattle; and to find out where we’re all moving to when a competitor comes along that can dethrone it. Twitter’s death has been painfully slow so far, but it feels like it’s accelerating.